


Moonlight Ghost

by TippenFunkaport



Series: SPOP Canon Compliant Post-War Fics [9]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angella Lives (She-Ra), Angella Returns, Angella is Rescued (She-Ra), Canon Compliant, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, Queen Glimmer (She-Ra), but nothing objectionable happens so don't worry, every tag on this fic is a spoiler, so read on at your own risk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TippenFunkaport/pseuds/TippenFunkaport
Summary: Something nameless is haunting Bright Moon castle and interrupts the royal family at dinner.For Glimbow Week Family / Parents prompt.(Every single tag on this is a spoiler, sorry. I don't know how else to list it!)
Relationships: Angella & Glimmer (She-Ra), Angella/Micah (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: SPOP Canon Compliant Post-War Fics [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877971
Comments: 15
Kudos: 74
Collections: Glimbow Week 2020





	Moonlight Ghost

It moved like a ghost in the moonlight. Perhaps it was a ghost. This could be death, this dull fog of nothing. If it had anything left inside this shell, it was only still pulsing by sheer force of will.

It could stop. Lie down and let it be over. It took so much to keep going.

But it was getting closer. To what, it didn’t know. But, in all its wandering, the pull had never been this strong.

The nameless one moved into the pale pearl light and gasped in the sudden rush. There was no breath, and it choked on being overfilled after so long empty. After nothing but the fog, the light was too much. It was drowning in air and bright. Images flashed, faded beyond recognition.

Then all at once the feeling receded, and everything was violet and warm. Under the cloak, the useless flesh on its back stirred for the first time in what could have been years or eons. Time was something it had long since stopped taking notice of.

The brightness receded and with it some fog. There was something about this place, something familiar. Shapes matched with memories it no longer had, things the void had taken long ago. The empty spaces held pain, too tender for this sudden touch.

This had been a mistake. It should go.

Fear, familiar and sour. There was no pain in nameless wandering. But around the sharp edges of the missing pieces there was still the pull. The light had ignited something it thought the nothing had swallowed up long ago.

It kept moving.

This place. Shadows formed, echoes in hallways, a feeling... just out of reach. There were markings on the wall and it stopped, trying to make sense of them. Forms. People? It found the word in a dusty corner of its mind and remembered the shape of them. Had it been one of those once? Was it still?

It stared for a long time at one, moonstaffed. It hurt, but an old wound, scabbed over. Still, any feeling was new, even grief. It wasn’t sure how long it stared, tracing the lines, trying to find the space where this belonged in the jumble of nothing in its head.

Had the memories shattered in the fall or been left behind when it squeezed free of the sky? Forgetting was a blur. This was names and faces torn out, their edges frayed and jagged.

The pull tugged from elsewhere and it followed. More markings on walls, more ghosts barely formed.

The violet pulsed again, moonlight filling spaces too long in dreamless dark. The flesh on its back strained and ached against the weight of the cloak. At last, it let the ragged material fall to the polished floor. The downward tug of the dead skin reversed, muscles it had long since forgotten tightening and pulling upward.

Its hunched spine straightened, that dragging weight on its back now spread, light as feather. It stretched the new muscles, something stirring. Its fingertips tingled, pink and hot.

There!

No, it had lost it again. It had been a word. No, a name. Or maybe it was a face? It was almost like—

“I know you.”

It stopped. A voice. The first it had heard in so very long. But where? It looked around and then saw at last a tiny face looking up from its knee.

A child. A child with a head of sparkles and tight curls. An unfamiliar face. But the eyes... the eyes it knew.

“Your mural makes Mommy sad. Pop-pop too. Maybe they wouldn’t cry if they knew you weren’t just a picture.” The child strung a feathered stick in its toy bow and sent it flying down the hallway. It tapped off a paper target and clattered to the ground.

It knew this too.

Its mouth twisted upwards. It meant something, the gesture. Something good. It almost remembered.

She almost remembered.

She spoke, her voice cracked from disuse. “Can you take me to them?”

“’’K.” The child grabbed her hand and then she was nothing but air and sparkles and then she had a body again, a small hand in her own. That feeling of being rearranged and put back together… But, no, this was the wrong child.

The wrong time?

She watched as the little one ran ahead, eyes sparkling.

“There you are!” There was someone else in the hallway ahead of them. A man that looked like a boy she’d always liked. “Come on, sweetie, it’s getting late. If you want dessert, come back to the table.”

The man disappeared through the doorway that was right ahead. She knew it was there, even though she couldn’t see it. She remembered it. The violet light was pulsing through her stronger now, pushing away the fog, refilling parts empty and tired with something like life again.

The child followed but paused, waiting for her in the doorway. The pull was stronger than ever and things were coming into focus in a rush that should have been dizzying but instead felt like surfacing after too long underwater. She leaned down and whispered to the child.

“Is that your Daddy?” Her voice was stronger this time, with more of its usual polish.

“Yeah.” The child smiled at her, pink eyes sparkling.

Of course. The answer filled her with a perfect kind of peace.

“Daddy, can my new friend have cake with us?” Purple curls bounced into the dining room and she followed, certain.

“What new—” The man gasped and stared open-mouthed. It was a strange sensation, being seen, after so long with only stars and nothing for company.

And then glass shattered and she turned and saw her and knew this was why she had come, why she had clawed her way across dimensions to come back.

“M-mom?” Glimmer said, her hand raised as if she still held the glass that had already slipped to the ground. She looked so beautiful, a young woman. Young Queen.

Maybe it wasn’t the wrong time after all.

But then she heard an impossible voice, and the tiny bit of hope she’d built up came crashing down.

“Angie?”

Oh, no no. My love, you’re gone. Long gone.

So then she must be too.

She had died, after all, all alone, out there in the nothing.

But then there were arms around her, real and solid, and faces wet with tears.

So, not a ghost then.

Just someone who had finally come home at last.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always hugely appreciated no matter how long after posting it is!
> 
> Visit my Tumblr for asks, fic updates and misc thoughts. [https://tippenfunkaport.tumblr.com](https://tippenfunkaport.tumblr.com/)


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